


Pause

by ZombieBabs



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: (kind of), 5 Times, Alex deals with Strand's abandonment issues, Bonus Cat, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lies, Subtle Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZombieBabs/pseuds/ZombieBabs
Summary: Five times Richard Strand told a lie (or not quite the truth) and one time Alex Reagan told one for him. Bonus: a cat named Pause.





	

I.

“What do you mean, you haven’t been listening to the podcast?” 

Strand looks down at the petite woman sitting across from him at the table. Her eyes are wide, exasperated in the way she gets with him sometimes. Usually once she gets frustrated with his refusal to believe in the scientifically impossible. Like she cannot believe that he is taking into account _known_ scientific _truths_ in the face of so-called ‘proof’ of paranormal phenomena. 

“I have been busy, Alex. Tracking down my missing wife. Solving the Black Tapes.”

These are accurate statements. His search for Coralee and his obsession with finding The Advocate had taken over a large portion of his time. Time that should have been spent eating, or sleeping. Time he should have spent bathing, dressing himself, shaving. 

He’s not proud of the way he’d lost himself. The same way he isn’t proud of the way Alex blanches, like she’s just come to the conclusion that what she’d said might have been extremely insensitive. Ever since Coralee’s second disappearance, Alex has been walking on eggshells around him. She shies away from anything that could possibly remind him of her loss--even going so far as to hesitate over the word ‘marriage’ itself.

Strand should tell her not to bother. He’s over it. He’s moved on, after nearly twenty years without seeing her, believing her dead. He’s had time enough to grieve.

He ignores the heavy feeling in his gut and the bitterness that lingers in his mouth, signs that tell him otherwise.

He isn’t proud of the lies he tells himself, either.

II.

“Are you coming?” Alex asks.

She’s wearing a sundress and strappy sandals. Her hair has been pulled up and out of her face, into a loose ponytail. 

She looks...different.

“I--” Strand says. It’s the only word that manages to escape. The rest disappear as he watches the hem of her dress shift around her legs as she walks, the skirt barely brushing the tops of her knees.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” she asks. Her smile reaches all the way up to her eyes, replacing the near-permanent exhaustion with something resembling joy.

“I--” he says again. He swallows, forces his eyes away from dangerous territory. 

It’s approximately 90 degrees here, even as the sun begins to set. He hasn’t changed out of his slacks or his sweater. And he refuses to be seen wearing something as undignified as open-toed shoes.

His opinion of said shoes must show on his face. Alex laughs. “Relax, I’m teasing you. Though, I can’t say I’m not disappointed. I was looking forward to seeing you in one of those tropical shirts. Maybe some boardshorts.”

Strand frowns at the suggestion of either garment. “I’m afraid you will have to remain disappointed.”

Alex grins. Strand lets the beginnings of a smile pull at his own lips. For a moment, it feels lighter than it has in a long time. It feels like it did back in the beginning, back when they were first finding their stride with one another, back before the investigation into the Black Tapes was so closely tied to his life.

“So, you coming? Or are you going to stay behind and haunt the hotel room?”

“Haunt?”

There is something in Alex’s smile that threatens to make his heart stop in his chest. “Yeah, Casper. When’s the last time you saw any sun?”

Strand snorts, then shakes his head. “Hilarious.”

“And?” She makes a rolling motion with her wrist, encouraging him to continue.

“I did intend to accompany you, yes.”

The wattage of her smile goes impossibly bright. Alex reaches out and takes his hand, turns to lead him out of the room.

Only to be yanked back by an unyielding Strand. 

Her small hand, gripping his much larger one, is electric. He feels as if he’s touched a live wire. He feels like a computer that has just short circuited. He stands there, frozen, staring down at their hands, waiting for the inevitable crash.

But it doesn’t happen.

“Richard?” Alex asks. The smile is still there, but the edges of it are dulled with concern.

Strand shakes his head. No crash, then. Just a soft reboot.

Still holding onto his hand, Alex turns again to leave. 

This time, he manages to follow.

He lets her guide him, down and out of the hotel. It’s difficult for him to focus on anything beyond the clasp of their hands, but Strand makes himself listen to Alex as they walk, side by side, down the sidewalk.

“The bar is right on the water,” she says. “And I hear they have _amazing_ drinks.”

He wonders if she know how amazing _she_ is. Wonders if she knows how beautiful she looks as the setting sun kisses the skin of her bare shoulders. Wonders if she knows just how much she challenges him, terrifies him, delights him.

He wonders if he’ll ever have the courage to tell her.

III.

There’s another crash from somewhere in the house. Alex smiles at him, apologetic.

Strand leans against the counter. He tries to smother a yawn, but it manages to win out. His jaw cracks with the strength of it.

“That bad?” she asks.

“It was fine.”

It had not been fine. When Alex had asked him to watch the cat, he had not expected to be kept up all night by the little beast. Random crashes had woken him every few hours, until the animal had decided to yowl outside his bedroom door, keeping him awake until the light of dawn pulled him out of bed completely.

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have asked, but my apartment doesn’t allow pets. I’m sure we’ll find a permanent home for him soon. I put his picture up on the PNWS website and everything.”

Glass shatters.

Alex flinches. “I’m _really_ sorry.”

“It’s fine, as I said. He’ll have Ruby to reckon with later.”

Alex laughs. “Still. Aren’t kittens supposed to sleep a lot?”

“Perhaps you should inform this one. It doesn’t do much in the way of staying still, asleep or otherwise.”

As if to illustrate his point, the creature streaks through the kitchen. It stops just short of the oven, jumps up on its hind legs, front paws stretched high over its head. It makes a strange trilling noise and then it is running again, out of the room the same way it came in--in a complete blur of movement and sound.

“I see what you mean,” Alex says. She looks up at him. “Wait. Are you smiling?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You were! You were smiling!” 

Alex points at him, as if accusing him of a heinous crime. 

Strand turns away, hiding his face and the smile currently threatening to break through. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alex.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

“Your tone implies you don’t believe me, Ms. Reagan.” He chances a look back at her, his expression schooled into seriousness.

She doesn’t look impressed. Alex meets his gaze with an amused look. “Not a word.”

“Well,” he says, and adjusts his glasses.

Alex checks her watch. “Oh! Demon Hunters should be on. Wanna go watch? I know how much you like to nit pick Dirk Abruzzie’s experiments.”

Strand raises an eyebrow. This time, he does nothing to suppress the wry smile that curls at his lips. “Experiments.” 

“Don’t scoff,” Alex says. “C’mon, you know you want to.”

He does want to. If not to have an opportunity to openly mock Dirk Abruzzie for Alex’s entertainment, but to have her here, with him, even for a little while longer. 

He motions for her to precede him into the living area. “After you.”

IV.

They’re fifteen minutes into the episode, Alex snickering at Dirk Abruzzie’s attempts at bullying so-called demons into making contact with him, and it is suspiciously quiet in the rest of the house.

Having had a child, Strand tries not to worry about the animal undoubtedly getting itself into trouble. Instead, he focuses on Alex’s laugh and the way she defers to him whenever Dirk describes a new demon--each one more ridiculous than the last.

“What about this one?”

“Never heard of it.” He pulls up Google on his phone, taps the name into the search field. “The top result comes from the Demon Hunters webpage, from a description of the episode. Usually, Dirk bothers to do a little research. He must be getting desperate for viewership.”

Alex opens her mouth, the corners of it pulled into a grin, but she shuts it before she can say a word. Her eyes are locked on something across the room. She points, moving slowly, as if afraid to spook a wild animal.

The analogy, in this case, is apt. Strand turns his head to see the glowing eyes of the small cat in the dark hallway just beyond the room they are currently occupying. 

“It’s making contact,” Alex whispers, excited.

“It’s more likely to be on the hunt, this time of night.”

Alex smacks his arm with the back of her hand, eyes still on the cat. “It’s making contact,” she insists. 

The cat does seem to be inching its way toward them. First its nose can be seen, followed by a tiny feline face with absurdly long whiskers. It takes slow, cautious steps until it’s finally fully materialized in the soft light of the television.

“Hi there, kitten,” Alex says. She puts her hand down, but the cat is still a half a dozen feet away and doesn’t seem to be inclined to sniff it any time soon. “Don’t be afraid of mean ol’ Dr. Strand. He’s a giant, but I assure you, he’s a gentle one.”

Strand frowns. Alex’s teasing isn’t new. It’s his own response to it that he doesn’t know what to do with. If Alex were Coralee, and this was twenty years ago, he might have laughed, might have told her that he resented any insinuation that he might be _gentle_ , might have scooped her up with a growl and the intention of proving just how not-gentle he could be.

He has to tamp down on that response now, has to remind himself that he and Alex are _colleagues_ , perhaps even friends. He shoves the image of her--spread out beneath him, and tangled in his sheets, his teeth raking down the delicate skin of her neck--as far down as it will go. He has no right to think of her this way, to desire any type of intimacy between them at all.

He tells himself, firmly, that her friendship is enough.

V.

“I think you should name him Pause.”

Strand looks up at Alex. Neither have spoken for a long stretch of time, each lost in their own research, down in his father’s basement. “Paws?”

“No, Pause. Like your Tapes? As in play, pause, ‘be kind, please rewind?’”

Strand makes a noncommittal sound. Then, after a moment, he asks, “What makes you think I’m going to name it? I don’t intend to keep it, if you remember.”

Alex glances pointedly at the cat currently curled on the desk next to Strand’s laptop. “You two have been inseparable for days, now.”

“And?”

“And, you’ve made excuses every time I’ve offered to bring somebody by to take a look at him.”

“I’ve been busy, Alex.”

Alex doesn’t quite keep herself from rolling her eyes at him. The excuse is flimsy, at best, and he knows it. “‘You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is.’”

Strand frowns.

“Seriously. You can admit it. You _like_ him. You might as well keep him.”

Strand has never had a pet. Growing up, his father would never have allowed it. After his mother--after he left for school, there were regulations against having animals in student housing. And then Charlie had been born and she had been his entire world. He would have no idea what to do with an animal. “He would be better off with someone else.”

“You’re kidding, right? You have to be kidding me right now.” The tone of her voice has shifted. Strand imagines that if she weren’t seated, her hands would be on her hips.

“That was not my intention, no.”

“Okay, so. You think he’d be better off with someone who hasn’t already bought him a million toys? Who doesn’t already have this nice big house for him to run amok in? You think he’d be better off with someone who doesn’t feed him the fancy food from the tin? Or let him curl up on their lap while they work?”

Strand can’t meet her eyes. He watches the kitten’s ears twitch in his sleep and refrains from reaching out to scratch at the spot behind them. All of Alex’s arguments had been valid. Except--

“I’m going to sell the house, Alex. My work, my Institute, is in Chicago. You, of all people, should know that my work is too important to me for me to have any kind of distractions. Including a pet.”

The hurt on Alex’s face is plain for him to see. Before she sighs and sits back in her chair, her hands going back to her keyboard, her eyes on the monitor of the laptop in front of her as she goes back to her research, the conversation clearly over. “Right.”

Strand goes back to his own work. His stomach aches, that familiar heavy feeling in his gut that he gets when he hasn’t told the whole truth. He gets up from the table, ignoring the way the cat gets up as well, the way it follows at his heels as he goes to the kitchen to make some tea.

I.

Strand opens the door to see Alex on the front porch of his father’s house. She looks anxious--worried, even--and it instantly puts him on edge.

“What’s wrong?”

She blinks, obviously not having expected the question. She looks at him, expectant, before she shakes her head. “What do you mean, ‘what’s wrong?’ I should be asking _you_ that.”

Strand frowns. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Ruby called me and told me to come over. ‘ASAP,’ she said. I came directly from an interview. Is everything okay?”

Strand sighs. “Of course she did.”

“Okay, now _I_ don’t follow. What’s going on?”

“You might as well come in. I’ll make some tea.” He steps to the side, allowing Alex to brush past him and into the house. 

Alex drops her messenger bag onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table, before taking her usual seat. She patiently waits for him to put the kettle onto the burner, for him to put sugar and milk into her usual mug, for him to bring their drinks to the table and sit at his usual spot across from her. She allows him to take a sip from his own mug, to let its contents sooth him for what will undoubtedly be a difficult conversation.

But even Alex has limits to her patience. He knows his time is up when she catches her lower lip in between her teeth, her gaze moving from her tea to study his face. “So,” she says, drawing the word out, inviting him to explain before she jumps into her own series of questions.

“The cat,” he says, and then closes his eyes, cursing his lack of eloquence. “I found someone,” he tries again, “Someone interested in adopting it. A family.”

“And Ruby called me, because? She made it seem like an emergency.”

Strand lets out a breath through his nose, something in-between fond amusement and frustration with his employee. “She thinks I’m making a mistake. I assume she believes you can convince me to keep it before they come to pick it up.”

Alex looks around. “Where is he, anyway? Pause is usually right on your heels, wherever you go.”

“Hiding,” he says. He takes a sip of tea, taking a sort of perverse pleasure in the way the still-scalding liquid burns his tongue. 

“Cats are smart,” Alex says, nodding. “He probably knows something’s up.”

“Yes. Well,” he says, but falls quiet, having nothing more to say.

They drink their tea in silence, with not even the now familiar purr of a small cat to break it up. 

“Do you _want_ me to convince you to keep him?” Alex asks.

He should tell her no. He should tell her that he’s made up his mind. That he _cannot_ keep an animal.

His stomach aches and he takes a sip of tea to calm it. 

It occurs to him that he could Alex the truth. That he likes sharing his father’s large house with another being. He finds himself talking to the animal on nights when it becomes _too_ quiet, even when he knows the animal cannot respond. He looks for it, now, when it trots after him whenever Strand moves from room to room, settling down across his feet or at his elbow--sometimes, even curling up in his lap as Strand types on his laptop or reads from Howard Strand’s journal. Much like Alex has become part of his routine, so has the scrappy young cat with too-long whiskers and a penchant for trouble.

But everyone leaves, everyone except Ruby and he _pays_ her. Alex will conclude her story and step out of his life and Strand will have to pick up the pieces and move on. Best to let go of the cat before he ends up losing that too, just as he’s lost everyone else, again and again and again in his life.

“I don’t know,” is what he says. His stomach doesn’t hurt quite as much after the last word leaves his mouth, and he figures it’s as much of the truth as he can muster.

“Then don’t give him up. He’s good for you. You remember to eat, when you go to the kitchen to feed him. You don’t look quite so, so... _haggard_ , as you did, before he showed up. And _you’re_ good for _him_. He _likes_ you--he wouldn’t follow you around like he does if he didn’t.” Alex pauses, her eyes softening. “But it’s your decision. Just don’t jump to one for the wrong reasons, is all I’m asking--all _Ruby_ and I are asking.”

There’s a knock at the door.

“That would be them,” Strand says. He pushes himself up from the table and goes to answer it.

Alex follows, the legs of her chair scraping against the hardwood floor in her haste. “What are you going to tell them?”

Strand hesitates, his hand curled around the handle, poised to open the door. He ducks his head. “I don’t know.”

He opens the door before she can argue with him, before he can back down completely. There is a couple on the other side of the door, a blonde and a brunette, their hands joined between them.

“Hi,” says the blonde. “I’m Sam and this is Ali. We spoke to you on the phone earlier. About the cat?”

“Richard Strand,” he says. He looks back at Alex, visible just beyond him.

“Hi, I’m Alex,” she says, doing a little wave.

“Nice to meet you,” Ali says.

“So, can we meet him? The cat?” Sam asks, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.

“Don’t mind her,” Ali says, giving her girlfriend a look of fond exasperation. “She’s just really excited. Hasn’t stopped talking about kittens since we saw your ad online.”

“Ah,” Strand says, forcing himself to smile. “I--”

He stops, unable to form another word. His stomach protests, a pain so strong that it sends a wave of nausea through him. 

He takes a deep breath, attempting to settle it. “I--”

Alex steps around him. She puts a hand on Strand’s chest, grounding him. “I’m _really_ sorry that you came all the way out here, but Richard and I decided to keep the kitten.”

Sam’s shoulders slump and Ali frowns.

“I know, we really should have called. But the decision was sort of last minute. I hope you can understand.”

Sam turns disappointed eyes on Strand. Her stare is a little unnerving, but eventually she elbows Ali. Ali follows her gaze, her frown melting away as she looks him up and down. 

“Yeah, okay,” Ali says. “Looks like you need him more than we do.”

“We can always surprise Chelsea with a kitten from the pound?” Sam says.

“A rescue it is.” Ali turns to Alex and Strand and waves with her free hand. “Thanks anyway.”

Strand watches them go, until their car backs out of the driveway and disappears down the street. Something brushes his legs and Strand looks down to see the kitten rubbing the length of its body against Strand’s slacks.

Alex smiles. “Hey, look who it is.”

“Pause,” Strand says, trying out Alex’s name for the cat. He picks the animal up and smiles when it rises up to butt its head against Strand’s forehead.

His stomach feels better and despite the weight of the kitten in his arms, he feels lighter than he has in a long time. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be smut. And look at how it turned out. Some kind of fluffy, domestic hurt/comfort monstrosity.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. This was my attempt at getting back into the writing game. Lemme know what you think.
> 
> Love ya, duckies.


End file.
